(5 Aug 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
London – 5 August 2024
++STARTS ON SOUNDBITE/VIA VIDEO CALL/ FRAMING FROM SOURCE++
1. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephanie Alice Baker, Reader in Sociology at City, University of London:
"If you look at the particular incident that has basically been the real tipping point of the violence and the unrest, what it indicates is that it feeds into a much larger problem that has been there, latent. And these are tensions that you see in a lot of countries right now, I would include the US to some extent in that too. Where you have emerging feelings of nationalism, a sense that people are being left behind, a sense that people’s freedoms are being denied, the sovereignty of the nation is at stake. And a lot of this really coincides with a rise of immigration and a cost of living crisis. So people have these first hand experiences of grievances and a lot of these negative feelings are projected onto an ‘other.’"
++BLACK FRAMES++
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephanie Alice Baker, Reader in Sociology at City, University of London:
"I wouldn’t see this incident as the cause, you know, of all of the violence. Again, I would see it much more as the straw that broke the camel’s back. I think these groups were already feeling a lot of these grievances and it just became the opportunity for them to, yeah, unleash."
++BLACK FRAMES++
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephanie Alice Baker, Reader in Sociology at City, University of London:
"But actually the role of social media in a lot of these riots was much more symbolic, and it was the way in which people were able to communicate solidarity with one another."
++BLACK FRAMES++
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Stephanie Alice Baker, Reader in Sociology at City, University of London:
"This is what we commonly see for any of us who study crowd behaviour, it’s that there is always a tipping point where people feel emboldened and enabled to act on those feelings, and it’s typically when they see others doing the same thing, right? If they’re the only one doing it, the stakes are so high in terms of the consequences but when they see others doing that, then all of a sudden they they feel more encouraged and more able to act on those feelings."
++ENDS ON SOUNDBITE++
STORYLINE:
A scholar in Sociology at the University of London suggested on Monday that social media played a role in recent violent protests that have broken out across the UK, but the real link was to a larger "latent" problem.
"If you look at the particular incident that has basically been the real tipping point of the violence and the unrest, what it indicates is that it feeds into a much larger problem that has been there, latent," said Stephanie Alice Baker.
"The role of social media in a lot of these riots was much more symbolic, and it was the way in which people were able to communicate solidarity with one another," she added.
Britain has been convulsed by violence for the past week as crowds spouting anti-immigrant and Islamophobic slogans clashed with police.
The disturbances have been fuelled by right-wing activists using social media to spread misinformation about a knife attack that killed three girls during a Taylor Swift-themed dance event.
More than a dozen towns and cities have been caught up in the unrest including London, Hartlepool, Manchester, Middlesborough, Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, Belfast, Nottingham and Leeds.
"I think these groups were already feeling a lot of these grievances and it just became the opportunity for them to unleash," she told The Associated Press.
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/4c85b32b7aad4cc3b39cd181b5e26368
Author: AP Archive
Go to Source
News post in August 10, 2024, 9:04 pm.
Visit Our Sponsor’s:
News Post In – News
